New Delhi: Justice UU Lalit, a judge on the Supreme Court, was sworn in as India's 49th Chief Justice on Saturday. Droupadi Murmu, the president, administered the oath.
Justice Lalit, who was appointed as an SC judge in 2014, would serve as CJI for only 74 days before leaving office on November 8, 2022. He would be the second Chief Justice of India to be promoted directly from the Bar to the bench of the Supreme Court.
In order to conduct the trial in the 2G spectrum allocation case, the CBI appointed Justice Lalit as a special public prosecutor. Justice Lalit has also contributed to several important rulings by the Supreme Court.
Additionally, he had promised to make the listing as simple, transparent, and clear as possible and to develop a precise procedure for bringing up the issues.
"Let me place some of the parts that I intend to do in my next innings of 74 days. Three areas: I had a word with the office of SCBA and SCORA today. This is where we need to take cues from CJI Ramana. We must strive hard to make the listing as clear, and transparent as possible.
"The second area which is mentioning of an urgent matter, I will certainly look into. Very shortly you will have a clear regime where any urgent matters can freely be mentioned before respective courts.
The third area is of listing of matters before the Constitution Benches and matters which are specially referred to as three judge benches. I have always believed that the role of the Supreme Court is to lay down law with clarity. The best way to do it is to have a larger bench so that issues get clarified immediately so that there is consistency and people are well aware of what are contours of peculiar positions of law. We will strive hard to always have at least one Constitution Bench functioning throughout the year," Justice Lalit had said.
It's interesting to note that the former Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana, similarly expressed regret for not giving attention to the issues of listing and posting of matters. "We were busy fire-fighting on a daily basis. All sides are equal contributors to this problem," ex CJI had said.